The present invention relates to a spring manufacturing apparatus for manufacturing springs having various shapes by forcibly bending, curving, or winding wires to be formed into springs with tools while continuously feeding the wires.
In a conventional spring manufacturing apparatus, tools are respectively driven/controlled by independent servo motors and placed at arbitrary angles around a wire.
The tool positions are, however, finely adjusted by a skilled operator by hunching in accordance with a desired spring shape. This operation is difficult to repeat, and hence is a most time-consuming operation.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above problem, and has as its object to provide a spring manufacturing apparatus which can execute fine adjustments on the positions of a plurality of tools with respect to the wires fed out from the wire guides by automatic control with high accuracy in a short period of time.
In order to solve the above problem and achieve the above object, according to the present invention, there is provided a spring manufacturing apparatus for manufacturing a spring by feeding a wire to be formed into a spring out of an end portion of a wire guide, and forcibly bending, curving, or winding the wire by using a tool in a spring forming space near an end portion of the wire guide, wherein a plurality of tools are arranged to extend radially with respect to wires fed into the spring forming spaces, supported to be slidable toward the wires fed into the spring forming spaces, and supported to allow the end portions of the tools to simultaneously swing with respect to the wires fed out from the end portions of the wire guides.
As described above, according to the present invention, since a plurality of tools are supported to allow the end portions of the tools to simultaneously swing with respect to the wires fed out from the end portions of wire guides, fine adjustments on the positions of a plurality of tools with respect to the wires fed out from the wire guides can be simultaneously executed by automatic control with high accuracy in a short period of time.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters designate the same or similar parts throughout the figures thereof.